Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Portrait of Henry Lawson

Portrait of Henry Lawson

1922

Woodcut on paper
Bequest of Sir William Dixson, 1952
DL PXX 85, Volume 10, 16b

Lawson’s was a sad, slow demise. He was one of Australia’s most acclaimed and cherished poets and writers, yet for many years he suffered from ill health, depression and alcoholism. On 2 September 1922, at the age of 55 he died of a cerebral haemorrhage.

Lionel Lindsay published this woodcut in the week Henry Lawson died. The print is based on a number of drawings that Lindsay made of Lawson some 20 years before, around the turn of the century when the two men first met. Lindsay had arrived in Sydney to work as an illustrator, and he and Lawson often contributed to the same periodicals that were published in Sydney, notably the Bulletin and the Lone Hand.

Remembering Lawson

Lionel Lindsay remembered Lawson:


"He was very deaf and that gave his eyes, deep dark eloquent eyes, an alertness for all their soft glance. They would light up when he met you and laughed, and when I thought of making a drypoint of him I got him to sit for me at the Bulletin office where I had a room at the time. I made several drawings"*


Footnotes

* Lionel Lindsay correspondence to Harold J Wright, 18 September 1945, Mitchell Library manuscript collection, MLMSS 515/4, p 395

A small red stamp

On the bottom corner of the print is a small red stamp with the initials ‘WD’. This marks the print as William Dixon’s own copy. Dixon enjoyed a long and lasting friendship with Lionel Lindsay and was a particularly enthusiastic collector of Lindsay’s prints. Sir William resolved to acquire every one of Lindsay’s prints and subsequently bequeathed his whole collection of around 1300 prints to the state in 1952.